From my Pulpit

The Golden Rule, sort of:

I was in high school with a guy named Ken. Ken was a very nice person, all smiles. I did not know him that well, just well enough for us to smile at each other and call each other by our first names or nicknames.

Recently there was an article in the paper about Ken. Ken married a French lady, who inherited a From my Pulpit near Normandy, France that sleeps something like 150 people.

The article said Ken invited 20 of his closest friends of the class of 1960 and their spouses for a ten day visit at the Chateau. The article told what a nice time they had.

I felt slightly hurt that I wasn’t invited…. Especially after I read the details of what good of a time they had.

Our graduating class of 1960 had 300 people, the largest yet, at that time. Ken’s close friends, excluding the ones who have already died, made up about 1/12 of our student body. I felt excluded.

Then, I put the shoe on the other foot, so to speak… or walked a mile in his shoes, or something of a Zen nature like that.

I asked myself if I married someone who inherited a French Chateau in France and wanted to invite 20 close friends and their spouses to spend ten days, would I have invited Ken?

Of course not! Why would I? We were not that close.

I feel better now.

(In all fairness to Ken, no one in the class was excluded from a visit to their place. After the article came out he massed email everybody in the class offering a second trip to his chateu)